


Lies, Damn Lies, and Avengers

by dellaxstreet



Series: If You Give A Supe A Paycheck [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Darcy Lewis, Catfights defeated by the power of science, Gen, Helen Cho is the ultimate fangirl, Humor, IKEA is dangerous, Who let the Avengers out in public
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 15:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12015207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellaxstreet/pseuds/dellaxstreet
Summary: “Would it be treason if I tased Captain America?”Setting his spoon down, Bruce offered her a crooked smile. “I’m sure Coulson could come up with some loophole about this being Swedish soil. But uh, is that Plan A?”“Plan A was ‘take the Avengers to IKEA, what could possibly go wrong?’ Face it, Jekyll, we’re totally doomed.”Featuring: The Avengers as secret five-year-olds, Steve Rogers the king of all trolls, and gross abuse of Swedish meatballs.





	Lies, Damn Lies, and Avengers

Locking eyes with the poor woman on the other side of the counter, the silent female ‘get me out of here’ signal in full strength, Darcy cursed viciously under her breath. At this rate, she’d never get that new office chair, they were going to be descended upon by half a dozen terrifying S.H.I.E.L.D. lawyers, and Captain America was going to single-handedly deal a death blow to their country’s relationship with Sweden.

Nick Fury was a dirty liar, and Steve Rogers? Yeah, Steve Rogers was absolutely not the least of her problems. In fact, right now he was number one on her list.

This was amazing for many reasons, including but not limited to: The fact that Thor was standing right next to him, contributing to the terrorization of salespeople, the conspicuous figure cut by Tony Stark as he eyed a bed-shaped sofa while writing down design notes, the fact that nobody had seen Clint Barton for at least half an hour so he was probably hanging out on the ceiling, and what was probably an iminent manslaughter charge if Natasha kept talking to the cashier.

Right now, the only Avengers who didn’t make her want to scream either weren’t present (because Sam had a life and Soviet Robocop wasn’t big on crowds), or were named Bruce Banner.

“Bruce,” Darcy said, turning to where the man was sitting, eating frozen yogurt placidly while the destruction raged, “you are my favorite. I’m officially Team Green. You’re clearly the only one of them who’s _sane_ and if I didn’t think you’d pass out I would absolutely kiss you right now.”

Spoonful halfway to his mouth, Bruce paused, blinking owlishly at her. Then his mouth quirked. “If I’m the sane guy here, we’re all in trouble.”

Of course, this was the exact moment when Jane returned from perusing Swedish candies and spotted Dr. Cho, who was leaning against the counter and gazing adoringly up at Thor. Thor, who was the humanoid equivalent of a superpowered golden retriever, flashed her a smile every now and then between meatballs. To the casual not-Jane observer, it looked like a starstruck scientist realizing how abnormally friendly Norse gods were. (Or aliens from another dimension, whichever – nobody could ever seem to give her a straight answer on which it was.)

To the observer who was Jane, on the other hand, it clearly looked like Helen was getting her flirt on and Thor was being… Thor, so he didn’t stop her. If the thunderous look which had just passed over the physicist’s face was anything to go by. Darcy buried her face in her hands.

“Not only are you the sane one here Bruce, you’re the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. No offense to… actual blind people, but we’re it. We’re the ones standing between these people and total chaos.” She let out a quiet groan. “Would it be treason if I tased Captain America?”

Setting his spoon down, Bruce offered her a crooked smile. “I’m sure Coulson could come up with some loophole about this being Swedish soil. But uh, is that Plan A?”

“Plan A was ‘take the Avengers to IKEA, what could possibly go wrong?’ Face it, Jekyll, we’re totally doomed.”

It had seemed like such a good plan when Darcy had come up with it three days ago. The Science Bros were all going to some Science! extravaganza in the city, where nearly everyone around her spoke fluent math and if she tried to keep up with the conversations she’d strain something before long. Really, though, she’d accepted that she would never be able to follow all the scientific technobabble – she was the one who’d fixed the new coffeemaker on Monday in record time, and she was the one who kept New York’s craziest trio of geniuses fed and watered.

So she hadn’t _really_ expected to get the reaction she did when she wound up in conversation with Helen Cho and had to interrupt her commentary on Jane’s research (because Darcy was filed under “Darcy comma Jane’s” for eternity) with the first thing that popped into her head. This time, it was, “The only thing I know about wormholes is that I almost ran over Thor when he fell out of one, and then I had to tase him, too.”

Helen’s eyes widened. “I’d heard that Dr. Foster was in contact with Thor, but do you know him as well?”

That look was a classic. It had ended up on a lot of women’s faces, and for a lot of obvious reasons. Thor was gigantic, cut as hell, either a god or a really cool alien depending on who you asked, and most importantly, so incredibly sincere that it sometimes hurt. Asgardians had probably invented chivalry.

Darcy opened her mouth to try and spare the good doctor’s feelings, but what actually came out of it instead was, “Oh yeah, you should’ve seen how excited he got when this old lady on the subway told him about IKEA. Don’t ask me how he knew Swedish, though, I think it’s some kind of alien Babelfish thing.”

And then, purely because she was tired of the male-to-female ratio in Avengers tower, she eyed the excited look on Helen’s face before adding, “Have you ever thought about joining Tony’s little Science Squad? I don’t know what half their equipment does but apparently it rocks. _And…_ if you come hang out with us, I’ll totally let you come along when we actually take Thor to the furniture store of his Northern homeland.”

A soft smile formed on Helen’s lips. “I was under the impression Thor was Norse.”

“Norway, Sweden, either way they’re cold and use too many umlauts.” Darcy waved a hand airily and turned to scan the crowd. “Come on, let me introduce you to Jane.”

Originally, the plan was simple: Take Thor to IKEA, marvel at his childlike wonder. Bring Dr. Cho along for the ride so that she could bask in the glory that was Thor’s delight over everything. Convince badass female scientist to join the Science Squad, therefore outnumbering Tony when Darcy was in the room and also recruiting another sane person to their ranks. Not only was it a great recruitment pitch, it was also downright perfect.

Then Tony found out about the trip. Clint was lurking in the air vents like a ninja, so he heard too. He told Natasha, who told Steve, who told Jane. And finally, Jane convinced Bruce to come too, because despite his nervousness in public places, she was a difficult woman to argue with. Suddenly, Darcy was staring down the barrel of almost all the Avengers tagging along on this outing, because apparently, the idea of seeing Thor loose in IKEA appealed to crazy people across the board.

By the time Fury found out, Darcy was seriously considering stealing Tony’s credit card, claiming to be his illegitimate daughter, and relocating to Australia.

“Don’t fuck it up,” was his advice, eye fixed sharply on her.

At first, it went spectacularly well. The only person who could pronounce half the names of things was Thor, with Natasha coming in close second. Clint was absolutely hopeless, and Tony was pretending he liked expensive things too much to be intrigued by the merchandise until they found the spinny chairs, at which point it all became a game. Bruce was even talked into sitting on one, though he refused to be spun. There was a very real possibility the Avengers were secretly five.

Helen and Jane were looking at glassware and discussing whether or not they could buy some to bring home and mess with Tony, a course of action that Darcy one hundred percent approved of.

The wild card in all of this, as it turned out, was Steve Rogers. Which was funny, because on the surface, Steve was the most earnest person alive. He gave Thor a run for his money. His baby blues said ‘I read to blind orphans and rescue kittens from treetops’ every time they went wide with innocence. He tagged along inspecting furniture shapes good-naturedly, even made a joke about buying a terrible premade painting for his bedroom.

But underneath all that? He was a little bit of an asshole.

First, he took on Tony’s spinning speed challenge, and spun him so fast that he nearly threw up all over Darcy’s shoes. Only her best glare kept it from happening. There was no way Iron Man was going to have to owe her two, since he kept forgetting to replace the last ones that had gotten exploded on.

Then, he asked Clint if he could hide in these rafters, with such an open, friendly expression that it didn’t even cross the archer’s mind to question his challenge. Five minutes later, Barton had disappeared and was calling down to Natasha from various points in the ceiling about whether or not he should drop loose change on anyone.

The worst, by far, however, was when Thor discovered the restaurant counter. After Bruce had successfully obtained frozen yogurt, Steve immediately pointed out the existence of Swedish meatballs. Somehow, this led to he and Thor both buying some, which in turn led somehow to another challenge. But this time, it had nothing to do with dizziness, and everything to do with eating every meatball in the entire store.

“I’m sorry, sir, I just don’t think we have any more,” the nervous looking woman manning the counter told Steve. She had ‘oh God I’m letting down Captain America’ face, which was hilarious, since Darcy was pretty sure that Captain America thought it was funnier if the store ran out.

Thor polished off his umpteenth plate of meatballs. Natasha struck up a conversation with a cashier who looked equal parts attracted and terrified, to the point where he began to slowly look like a heart attack in progress. Clint lurked in the ceiling like a weirdo and called things down to total strangers. Tony started taking down serious ideas, staring at rows of unusually shaped plastic bar stools. And Steve… Steve offered to buy pre-frozen meatballs and get the woman working the restaurant to heat them up, because they couldn’t declare a winner otherwise.

So of course the only one not doing something potentially dangerous was Bruce. And of course, Jane and Helen were about to get into it over flirting with beefcake Norse gods who had girlfriends.

This was Darcy’s life now.

“You might want to stand back,” she told Bruce, squaring her shoulders as she marched over to the counter, planting herself between the two female scientists in time to prevent catastrophe. Over by the registers, Natasha broke off her attempts to drive a poor man insane and turned to look.

“Jane, for Thor’s sake, there are actual epic poems written to your beauty floating around Asgard. If you take your eye off blonde and stormy for five minutes, I’m sure there’ll be another one on its way about your elbow or something. Take a chill pill, or I will tase you. And Helen,” she rounded on the other scientist, who was watching her warily, “I’d say tell Jane you’re not here scheming to take him away, but this is honestly too stupid for me! Come on. Skip the catfight and go back to trying to invent time travel.”

“...you’ve been working on time travel?” asked Helen quietly.

Jane blinked, taken off-guard, then nodded. A wise choice. “If it’s possible to move between points in the universe that are vastly separated, I don’t see why we couldn’t also move in time along with space. It’s just a theory, of course.”

Good. Science! talk. Darcy’s work there was done. Which left the other, bigger problems to deal with. Chiefly, the fact that Steve Rogers should have known better than to terrorize the Swedes. “Steven! For shame. The nice lady told you they were out of meatballs, and you’re going to lay off, or so help me I am going to sneak into your room in the middle of the night with Clint’s help and bedazzle the _fuck_ out of your uniform.”

He gave her his best aw-shucks face. “Understood, ma’am.”

Wiping the last of the sauce out of his mustache, Thor looked at her curiously and asked, “What is this ‘bedazzling’ of which you speak, Lady Darcy? Is this some sort of Midgardian badge of shame?”

There was still an archer in the rafters, a Russian assassin on the loose, and a billionaire about to be sued for copyright infringement. Priorities. Darcy had to remain focused, no matter how badly she wanted to see the look on Thor’s face when she actually explained what bedazzling was. No matter how she wanted to ask if she could decorate his cape, duty called. Duty sometimes blew.

“I’ll show you later,” she promised, and then tipped her head straight up. “Clint, if you don’t get down here in the next minute, I’m sending Natasha that video of you table-dancing in New Mexico.”

Distantly, there was a squawk of protest.

Getting the Russian member of their contingent corraled was always the most difficult to attempt. Natasha could smell manipulation a mile away, read people well enough to be basically a human lie detector, and knew how to kill somebody with a potted plant. She was as badass as she was terrifying, and she knew it. So usually, Darcy didn’t even try to trick or bully her. She went with a simpler approach.

“Hey Nat, I’ll give you twenty bucks if you help me steal Tony’s Starkpad when he’s not looking.”

The redhead looked her up and down, assessing, then smirked and nodded. “Piece of cake.”

Quietly, the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind finished his frozen yogurt, while an IKEA employee muttered quietly about finishing college and Thor, bless him, ordered a sundae.

When she got back to the tower, Darcy was going to give Eyepatch Man an earful, and she didn’t care how long he tried lighting her on fire with the power of his mind. If Steve Rogers was the best behaved member of the Avengers, then she was the queen of Sheba.


End file.
